Office of the Historian

500. A 4e/252

The Japanese Embassy to the Department of State98

undated

The Washington customs treaty provided for the early convocation of a conference at which, by agreement between China and the Powers, certain economic measures should be adopted for the benefit of China as a whole. The Washington Conference further passed a resolution for the establishment of an international commission to inquire into the existing conditions of the administration of justice in China, with a view to eventual relinquishment by the several Powers of their respective rights of extraterritoriality.

The spirit animating the Powers remains today what it was then. Various subsequent changes in the situation which have delayed the meeting of the conference and the commission have not affected the original intentions of the Powers; on the contrary, they have confirmed these intentions, and the Powers declare their willingness to consider sympathetically and helpfully just and reasonable aspirations that the Chinese people may seek to attain through means equally legitimate.

The Powers are accordingly anxious to expedite the meeting of the Tariff Conference and the commission on the question of extraterritoriality, with the desire to devise in cooperation with the Chinese people such modifications of the present tariff and judicial arrangements as will give effect to the terms and the spirit of the agreement reached at the Washington Conference, and will materially contribute to the establishment of those conditions of internal stability and international accord which are necessary conditions of the assumption by China of her proper place in the community of nations. But it is obvious that no effective progress toward this end can be made so long as the present agitation threatening the security of foreign lives and property persists in China, and especially so long as it expresses itself in the form of an organized movement designed to extort forcibly from the Powers the unconditional abandonment of the rights and interests assured to them by the present treaties. Such agitation seems to be pregnant with graver possibilities than the mere disintegration of responsible authority.

The Powers hope that they are mistaken in this estimate. But they feel it their duty solemnly to warn the Chinese Government that should these apprehensions be justified an entirely new situation will be created in which the hope entertained by the Powers for a new era of constructive cooperation with China will be frustrated.

  1. This Japanese draft of the proposed joint declaration in reply to the Chinese note of June 24, was handed to the Secretary by the Japanese Ambassador on July 21, 1925.↩